Inbound marketing is one of the hottest concepts in business growth today. Built around a comprehensive vision for creating new customer relationships online, the idea behind inbound has evolved over the years but was largely evangelized and institutionalized thanks to Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, the co-founders of Hubspot.

In today's marketplace, developing an effective strategy to respond to changes in the competitive environment is one of the most critical challenges facing many companies. A powerful tool that can be used to overcome this is competitive intelligence (CI). While there are many practices and techniques associated with performing market and busines research, CI is a formally structured professional approach that achieves consistent, usable results. We asked Rhonda Kleiman, founder of the Rhonda Kleiman Group LLC, to share with us her insights on competitive intelligence strategy for CEOs.

Trademark law is critical to an effective business growth strategy, and a trademark is one of the most valuable brand assets that a busines can develop. In the B2B market, companies need to invest in trademark strategy and protection whether they provide products or deliver services. We recently sat down with attorney Josh Gerben of Gerben Law Firm, a nationally recognized, award-winning trademark law firm, to discuss what every CEO should know about trademarks.

Before joining Wendt Partners, I co-founded an education travel company offering university students, faculty, and young professionals full-immersion programs in rural Africa and South America. My experience working with this young company enabled me to gain insights into what it really takes to grow a business, focusing on marketing strategies and action plans that result in growth.

The manufacturing industry is as challenging today as it has ever been. Material and transportation costs continue to rise. The pool of available, trained and experienced labor for many manufacturing jobs continues to shrink. Taxes and fees on facilities, materials and transactions eat at profits. And competition (both onshore and offshore) is growing. In the midst of this, nimble and proactive CEOs in the manufacturing industry can find new opportunities by partnering with a B2B business growth consultant on the following priorities: